Tracking a bear through the snow on Christmas week

1of2On a frozen night in snow in national forest, a bear -- not hibernating -- was attracted to a water dishPhoto: Photos by Tom Stienstra / The Chronicle

2of2After a fresh, light snowfall, a bear left a crystal-clear set of tracks.Photo: Tom Stienstra / Tom Stienstra / The Chronicle

The snowfield extended for miles before us through forest. At our feet, we examined a series of giant paw prints and tried to envision the story they might tell.

It was a cold, pristine morning in the mountains, where the snowpack was firm and the surface crusty from a 25-degree low. In one stretch, where a road had been plowed clean to the asphalt, then covered with an inch of frozen sugar, the paw prints were encased in perfect form.

The sighting stirred many questions: What was the bear doing out on Christmas week? What was it looking for? Where did it go? What did it find? How big was it?

To get the answers, Michael Patty, an extended family member visiting our mountain cabin, and I set out to track, trace and play wildlife detective.

For longtime readers, the name Patty might be familiar. Michael, 23, is the son of Rena and the late Jeffrey Patty, my old best friend and running mate from Whitney to the Canadian Rockies, whom we called Foonski. Michael has Jeff’s soulfulness, wisdom and intuitive mission to help others, and yet with Rena’s drive and curiosity, he was as captivated by the sight of the paw prints as his dad would have been.

We dressed for snow travel and prepared to head out into the wildlands to see what story the bear prints would tell.

This was adjacent to an area of Shasta-Trinity National Forest where the California Department of Fish and Wildlife once verified 25 bears in a 5-mile radius, and where I’ve made it a hobby to track and identify several of them.

One winter, CDFW biologists traced the bears here with GPS transmitters, and deep in a snow cave, dug down through the snow and found a female hibernating, with two guinea-pig-size bear cubs also running around inside. The females give birth while hibernating, you see, and when the mothers emerge in the spring, they discover their newborn for the first time.

The hunt is on

When most see the tracks of a bear, the first thing many wonder is, “How big is it?”

There are two ways to determine the size of a bear from tracks alone. If you are lucky to get a full set of tracks, both front and back paws, you can envision the bear standing in those tracks, even measure the distance between them; in this case, Michael measured the distance from front paws to back paws at about 3 feet; add about 1 ½ feet from shoulder to nose and about a half foot or so from hip to tail, and you’ve got a 5 ½-foot (or so) bear.

Another trick is to take the size of the print in inches, then add 1, and that’s how big the bear is in feet. So a 4 ½-inch print in the snow before us also would equal a 5 ½-foot bear.

The next question is, “What is it doing here?” That’s a good question. Over the years, with warmer winters and snow levels going up in elevation, it seems some bears are less apt to go into extended full hibernation. Last week, in this same area, in a 2.5-mile span, my wife, Denese, and I tracked three different bears in little more than an hour.

So if they are not hibernating, they are likely out and about looking for something to eat or drink. With snow, ice and frigid nights, that can be a challenge with few answers.

From a meadow, we followed the tracks where the bear appeared to walk, slow and deliberate, straight for our snow-covered driveway, and ambled right up to Michael’s car. The tracks then bunched up close, as the bear had appeared to give the car a slow going over.

Michael, with a sheepish grin, open a backdoor and pulled out a Ziploc bag of Christmas cookies. “I think he wanted these,” Michael said with laugh. “There’s some jam back there, too. We don’t have bears where I live. I guess we shouldn’t leave anything in our cars in bear country.”

Backtracking route

To replicate the bear’s route, the best strategy is to follow the tracks backward; if the tracks are fresh and you instead want to try to find the bear, you instead follow its path forward.

By backtracking the route, we traced the prints across a meadow, in and out of forest, up to a sub ridge, and then back down to a break in forest.

Throughout, distance between the prints remained steady, indicating the bear was meandering, an unhurried gait — not running, but not stopping, either.

The bear then emerged from forest and sauntered up to a metal water dish, kept full in summer for migratory songbirds. In the past week, rain had filled it, but the snow and frigid night that followed likely had frozen it solid, I noted.

Michael looked down and spotted two front paw prints on each side of the dish. Inside the bowl, the surface ice layer of the water bowl had been smashed through. It appeared about 2 inches of water was gone — likely slurped up by a thirsty bear on a cold winter night.

Then, in a stroke of luck, I remembered I had re-positioned a wildlife cam nearby about a month ago. When we downloaded the images, there he was, nine photos in all, grainy and dark, and at 1:42 a.m. Monday, Mr. Bear found the water dish, broke the ice and slurped away.

Maybe Mr. Bear didn’t get everything he wanted on this night in the woods — after all, those cookies in the car stayed out of reach — but at least one of his Christmas wishes, a good drink of water, came true.

And if my old buddy Jeff, Michael’s dad, was up there watching over us, it was the best Christmas gift he could have sent down to us.

Tom Stienstra is the outdoors writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is America’s first Back Country Sportsman of the Year and the only two-time National Outdoor Writer of the year. In 2008, he won first place for best outdoors column in America. As a photographer with The Chronicle, he won first place in America for best outdoors feature image in 2011. That year he was also awarded as Far West Ski Writer of the Year. His books have sold more than 1 million copies. His first novel, "The Sweet Redemption, An Inspector Korg Mystery," was released for 2013. His television show on CBS/CW won first place as America’s best outdoor recreation show, and his radio show on CBS won first place in 2010 for best environmental feature show in America. Tom has hiked 25,000 miles, caught world-record fish, led dozens of expeditions and taken part in all phases of the outdoor experience. He was the fourth living member inducted into the California Outdoors Hall of Fame.